Most woodwind instruments are played by blowing air past one or more reeds in the mouthpiece which then vibrate, producing a musical tone. The reed for these instruments has historically been made of cane, which is of sufficient thickness to produce the desired vibratory response, but which is also very delicate and subject to breaks, splits and molecular breakdown due to vibration and from the body acids to which it is subjected. An additional drawback to the cane reed is that disinfecting the reed is difficult, due both to its porosity and the fact that it must be kept moist to avoid cracking. On the other hand, an overly-moistened reed loses elasticity and, therefore, does not vibrate as needed to produce the desired tones. Finally, the delicate nature of reeds has prevented blind and vision-impaired music students from learning to play most woodwinds. Reeds require almost constant attention to maintain. For a blind student, inserting, checking and adjusting the reed means touching and usually breaking it.
Many attempts have been made to form a reed from plastic, plastic-impregnated or fibrous-type material. These synthetic models did not provide the same vibratory response as cane reeds.
Several early patents disclosed methods of making metal reeds for wind instruments which involved hammering the metal to thin and densify the tongue end of the reed (U.S Pat. No. 1,133,868); or to grind or roll the tongue end to make it thinner (U.S. Pat. No. 1,616,748). A third patent describes cutting longitudinal grooves in the tongue to make the reed more elastic but still rigid (U.S. Pat. No. 1,667,836). None of the reeds described in these became commercially successful, however, and cane remains the favored reed for all woodwinds. The metal reeds did not have the fibratory response of cane due to the ductal nature of the metal, so the instruments could not produce the desired tonal quality.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,420 issued Dec. 25, 1990, the present inventors disclosed a stainless steel reed of sufficient stiffness to provide the necessary vibratory response for musical instruments. This stainless steel reed has been met with enthusiastic acceptance. It has been found that the time consumed in the friction extraction process needed to manufacture the stainless steel reed can be considerably shortened by chemical milling of the sheet stock to remove a portion of the metal. Further, the excessive heat formed by this high-speed friction is avoided. The disadvantage of this process is that the chemicals required for "chem-milling", hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and nitric acid, are very caustic, and present a significant handling and disposal problem in view of increasingly-stringent environmental restrictions, resulting in such a process being relatively expensive.
It is known that there are other materials, titanium in particular, which can be processed in a manner similar to stainless steel, but which do not require the same hazardous chemicals for chem-milling, so the process itself becomes less costly. Titanium, like stainless steel, is also known for its inert quality, making it useful for medical implants such as artificial joints. Therefore, it would provide the needed resistance to breakdown as a result of exposure to body acids. One drawback is that titanium is relatively brittle and would not, in an untreated state, possess sufficient flexibility to provide the vibratory response needed for use as a reed.
It would be desirable to have a reed and a process for making such a reed which possesses the advantages of a stainless steel reed but is less expensive and hazardous to manufacture. It is to such a reed and a process that the present invention is directed.